The Quarterly Review

GOOD many years have elapsed since the attention of the country was very earnestly fixed upon the House of Commons, and during that period its place of meeting has been entirely changed, and some alterations have been introduced into its customs. As the generation which has arisen since 1832 is one which especially clamours for 'facts,' and is hardly satisfied to take a pin without being conducted through every room of the manufactory, and witnessing the process of wire-drawing, clipping, head-twisting, silvering, and sorting, let us so far fall into the habit of the day as to conduct Young England through the principal part of the Manufactory of Statute Law.

The manufactory itself, as is generally known, is situate on the left bank of the Thames, close to the foot of the now doomed Westminster Bridge. It is a magnificent pile, of enormous extent, covering in fact nearly eight acres, and was erected to replace the parliamentary buildings which were consumed by fire on the 16th of October, 1834. There are nearly as many opinions on the character of the edifice as there are in regard to what goes on within its walls. Its Gothic architecture delights those who see in it a stone embodiment of our Constitution-the slow, irregular, but picturesque growth of ages; but, on the contrary, excites the animadversion of others, who conceive that a national building should be the type of a national civilisation, or who, more probably rejecting any such sentimentality, simply prefer the comfortable apartments and well-fitting windows of our modern houses to the imposing chambers and obscuring lattices of our ancestors. The Earl of Ellenborough's proverbial simplicity of taste, which is conspicuous in the chaste and closely-reasoned speeches that have long made him a principal ornament of the distinguished assembly to which he belongs, recently induced his Lordship to say that he should have liked to have seen a more severe style of architecture adopted-one which would have been more fitting for the purpose to which it was to be devoted, and which should have had stamped upon it the appearance of that

VOL. XCV. NO. CLXXXIX.

eternity

eternity which we all desire our institutions should possess.' And Lord Brougham, while paying a hearty tribute to the artistic skill displayed in the building, has always been of opinion that it was barbarous in the extreme to erect a Gothic structure for parliamentary purposes in the middle of the nineteenth century, and would infinitely have preferred some more sober style.' On both sides of this subject, as on every other, a great many strong and sensible things may be said. Those who have lost themselves in Sir Charles Barry's labyrinths

'Whose wandering ways and many a winding fold
Involve the weary feet, without redress,

In a round error, which denies recess

who have shivered in his lofty chambers, and murmured at the early darkness of his cells, have often wished that the multifold magnificence of the New Palace had been exchanged for the convenience and comfort of a modern structure, where the feudal system had been less thought of than easy communication and practical accommodation. On the other hand, those whom Lord Willoughby d'Eres by's cards have admitted to the House of Lords on the day when her Majesty attends to open or to close the sitting, and who have witnessed the splendid and significant spectacle which is afforded upon such an occasion, warmly contend that no architectural arrangement could offer so fit a setting for the scene as the gilded and painted roof, the coloured windows gleaming with royal effigies, the illuminated heraldry, and the alternating glow and sparkle of that glittering chamber.

There are malcontents of another kind, who allow the propriety of Gothic, but who raise objections to the way in which the subject has been treated. They allege, for instance, that the river front of the manufactory is a mistake, inasmuch as it is a long unbroken frontage in a style which is beautiful chiefly from its breaks and variations, and that, seen from the Thames, the façade reminds the irreverent of a Birmingham steel fender, the small turrets at the corners doing duty for the places where the fire-irons repose. But, while admitting that there may be some force in various objections of detail which are urged to the edifice as seen at present, we must contend that no final judgment ought to be passed until the completion of the building permits the architect to say that, having at length done justice to himself, he demands it of the spectator. We believe that it is impossible to estimate by anticipation the effect of the grandest feature of the work, the colossal Victoria tower; and at the slow rate at which its richness creeps skyward, six or seven years must still elapse before the crowning stone is laid. This gigantic column, aided by the effect of the graceful clock-tower, may, and

probably

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The Quarterly Review, Band 95